Car & General share rattles NSE with 963pc price gain

Car & General’s share has hit a ten-fold increase over the last 12 months, making the stock the latest to benefit from outsized gains driven by speculative retail investors.

The rally has raised the company’s valuation by 936 percent from Sh2.65 billion to Sh27.41 billion in the space of 12 months, handing its owners a Sh24.76 billion boost in paper wealth in the period.

It closed at Sh341.75 per share on Wednesday, compared to Sh33 in August 2025 and Sh51 at the beginning of this year.

Car & General has joined a select group of stocks at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) that have recorded triple-digit percentage gains in the last three years, offering relief to owners who sat on low valuations during the bourse’s prolonged bear run between 2015 and 2023.

The diversified trading company with interests in mobility, engines, poultry, property and other goods, has reported higher profits and dividend payouts this year, adding fuel to the price rally that set off just over a year ago.

It announced a four-fold growth in net profit to Sh2.6 billion in the six months to June, from Sh637 million in the first half of 2025. The company raised its interim dividend to Sh1 per share from Sh0.30 a year ago.

“The first round of speculation from mid-2025 was about the value of the company’s property assets, where a back of the envelope calculation showed that the stock was trading below the value of the assets,” said Wesley Manambo, a senior research associate at Standard Investment Bank.

“With the core business doing well and the company reporting higher profits, the momentum has carried on as more investors jump in to speculate on the stock.”

As the share price continues to rise, so has investor activity on the stock, indicating that demand is going up even as those who have booked large capital gains cash out to book the profits.

In July, the stock was trading an average of 5,200 shares per day, with weekly volumes settling at between 17,000 and 36,000 shares.

In August, the weekly volumes rose to between 90,000 shares and 208,000 shares, with a daily average number of shares traded of 34,500 shares.

Since the beginning of 2024, companies such as East Africa Portland Cement (EAPC), Kenya Power, Uchumi Supermarkets, Africa Mega Agricorp (formerly trading as Kenya Orchards) and KenGen have led the market with gains of between 400 percent and 1,500 percent.

These gains were driven primarily by local retail investors who have made a gradual return to the market as share prices lifted from the previous bear run. Retailers are likelier to speculate on stocks that are seen to be within reach due to low nominal share prices, even when there is a risk of losses due to some companies having weak fundamentals.

Others with outsized gains of more than 100 percent in the period include Home Afrika, HFCB, Flame Tree Group, Britam Holdings, and the NSE.

Large cap firms Safaricom, KCB Group, Co-operative Bank of Kenya, I&M Group have also seen their share prices go up by more than 100 percent within the past two years, boosting the overall valuation of the bourse to a record Sh4.08 trillion from Sh1.44 trillion at the beginning of 2024.

EAPC has recorded the largest gain in the market over the two-and-a-half-year period, rising from Sh8 per share to the current price of Sh122.75 per unit.

The company’s rally was fuelled by a return to profitability and a resumption of dividend payments in 2025 after a 13-yer drought.

Similarly, Kenya Power’s stock has benefitted from a resumption of dividend payments in 2024 after a six-year drought. The company is now trading at Sh20.90, compared to Sh1.42 in January 2024.

However, not all bets by speculators at the NSE have paid off, with investors who took a gamble on TransCentury and its subsidiary East Africa Cables Limited seeing their investments frozen after the two firms were suspended from trading last year.

This was after the two companies were seized by their main creditor Equity Bank Kenya in June 2025 following defaults on Sh4.7 billion loans.

Before they were seized by Equity, the two firms had been among the top gainers at the NSE, with TransCentury adding 115 percent to a price of Sh1.12 per share between 2024 and 2025, and EA Cables gaining 76 percent to Sh1.71 per share.

→cmwaniki@ke.nationmedia.com

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